Climate change may affect health outcomes and food utilisation, with additional malnutrition consequences. This paper argues that resources for nutrition, such as agriculture budgets, are inadequate. Appropriate policies should make bioenergy development more pro-poor and environmentally sustainable. Efforts to achieve food security and good nutrition should address the underlying social, economic, cultural and political causes of food insecurity and malnutrition. Some low-income governments are now cutting excessive military spending and allocating more money to the public sector. The paper supports the so-called ‘twin-track approach’ to combating hunger and poverty: strengthening the productivity and incomes of hungry and poor people, targeting rural areas, ensuring direct and immediate access to food by hungry people and putting social safety nets in place.
Poverty and health
In this study, researchers aimed to determine short- and long-term trends in child malnutrition in Eastern and Southern Africa and how these are affected by drought and HIV. An analysis was conducted of data from national surveys, generally from the mid-1990s to the mid-2000s. Results indicated that overall trends in child nutrition are improving as national averages; the improvement is slowed but not stopped by the effects of intermittent droughts. In Southern Africa, the prevalence rates of underweight showed signs of recovery from the 2001–03 crisis. As expected, food production and price indicators were related (although weakly) to changes in malnutrition prevalence; the association was strongest between changes in food production and price indicators and changes in malnutrition prevalence in the following year. Despite severe intermittent droughts and the HIV and AIDS epidemic (now declining but still with very high prevalence rates), underlying trends in child underweight are improving when drought is absent. Preventing effects of drought and HIV could release potential for improvement and, when supported by national nutrition programmes, help to accelerate the rates of improvement, now generally averaging around 0.3% per year, to those needed to meet Millennium Development Goals (0.4 to 0.9% per year).
Using a cross-country data, drawn from sub-Saharan Africa and a multiple regression analysis, this paper examines the extent to which low nutrient intake has impacted on infant mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa. The results indicate that low nutrient intake has a significant influence on infant mortality rate, thus fulfilling the a-priori expectation that the lower the nutrient intake, the higher the rate of infant mortality rate in sub-Saharan Africa. Given this, measures such as, increase in food availability, macro-economic stability (especially, a reduction in inflation rate and exchange rate stability), improved nutrition through micro-nutrients fortification and supplementation, ensuring good governance and combating ethnic/religious/ civil conflicts and HIV/AIDS are suggested as possible solutions to improving nutrient intake in sub-Saharan Africa.
The objectives of the study were: to compare the nutritional status of participants (children who participate in the school lunch) and non-participants (children who do not participate in the school lunch) and to assess the diet quality of the school and home lunch. It was hypothesized that the nutritional status of participants was better than that of the nonparticipants. Three hundred and twenty pupils (index children) and their parents were randomly selected for the purpose of the study. Anthropometric measurements, 24-hour recall, interview schedules and observed weighed technique were the instruments used in data collection. The results indicated a positive association between the school lunch and nutritional status. The diet quality of the school lunch and nutritional status of participants were significantly higher than that of the non-participants. More schools and parents in similar environments should therefore be encouraged to venture into the SLP because of their positive outcome on nutritional status as well as the diet quality of participating children.
Out-of-pocket (OOP) health spending can potentially expose households to risk of incurring large medical bills, and this may impact on their welfare. This work investigates the effect of catastrophic OOP on the incidence and depth of poverty in Malawi. The paper is based on data that was collected from 12,271 households that were interviewed during the third Malawi integrated household survey (IHS-3). The paper considered a household to have incurred a catastrophic health expenditure if the share of health expenditure in the household's non-food expenditure was greater than a given threshold ranging between 10 and 40%. As the authors increase the threshold from 10 to 40%, they found that OOP drives between 0.73%-9.37% of households into catastrophic health expenditure. The extent by which households exceed a given threshold (mean overshoot) drops from 1.01% of expenditure to 0.08%, as the threshold increased. When OOP is accounted for in poverty estimation, an additional 0.93% of the population is considered poor and the poverty gap rises by 2.54%. The authors’ analysis suggests that people in rural areas and middle income households are at higher risk of facing catastrophic health expenditure. The authors conclude that catastrophic health expenditure increases the incidence and depth of poverty in Malawi. They call for financing measures to minimise the incidence of catastrophic health expenditure especially to the rural and middle income population.
This paper estimates the reduction in child mortality as a result of interventions related to the environmental and nutritional MDGs (improving child nutrition and providing clean water, sanitation, and fuels) and to estimate how the magnitude and distribution of the effects of interventions vary based on the economic status of intervention recipients.
The authors of this study set out to estimate the reduction in child mortality as a result of interventions related to the environmental and nutritional Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and to estimate how the magnitude and distribution of the effects of interventions vary based on the economic status of intervention recipients. They modelled the mortality effects of interventions on child nutrition and environmental risk factors, using data on economic status, child underweight, water and sanitation, and household fuels. The authors found that providing these interventions to all children younger than five years old would result in an estimated annual reduction in child deaths of 49,700 (14%) in Latin America and the Caribbean, 0.8 million (24%) in South Asia, and 1.47 million (31%) in sub-Saharan Africa. These benefits are equivalent to 30% to 48% of the current regional gaps toward the MDG target on reducing child mortality, the authors point out. Fifty percent coverage of the same environmental and nutritional interventions, as envisioned by the MDGs, would reduce child mortality by 26,900, 0.51 million, and 1.02 million in the three regions, respectively, but only if the interventions are implemented among the poor first.
This report notes that, despite the important role education plays in shaping indicators of progress, we understand little about the causal relationships and pathways between educational interventions and social outcomes. The report provides a synthesis of the existing evidence, data analyses and policy discussions. It finds that education has the potential to promote health directly and through supporting civic and social engagement. Education may reduce inequalities by fostering cognitive, social and emotional skills and promoting healthy lifestyles, participatory practices and norms. These efforts are most likely to be successful when family and community environments are aligned with the efforts made within educational institutions. This calls for policy coherence across sectors and across the stages of education.
The Population Reference Bureau has recently produced the report, "Improving the Health of the World's Poorest People." Despite the dramatic improvements in public health achieved in the 20th century, large disparities in health persist both within and between countries. Although governments widely agree that improving the health of poor people is a priority, programs designed to benefit the poor have not been entirely successful. This Bulletin examines facets of the poor-rich health divide, factors that play a role in health disparities, and approaches for improving the health of people living in extreme poverty.
This bulletin, produced by the Population Reference Bureau (PRB), highlights the poor-rich health divide that leaves more than 1 billion people worldwide excluded from both essential basic care and the benefits of advances in health and medical technology because of their extreme poverty. Key factors that contribute to these persistent health inequalities include lack of responsiveness by health systems to the needs of the poor; low quality of care; and the reality that public spending on health (justified on equity grounds) benefits non-poor groups more than the poor. In addition, few countries have taken measures to track progress in reducing socioeconomic disparities in health.